I was reminded of Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy's infamous sound byte (used as the title of this article) when I read about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's foot-in-mouth moment during a recent CNBC interview (YouTube Link). Here's what Schmidt said: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

Google deals with a lot more than just search. Remember, they own many people's email, personal conversations (Google Voice), location (Latitude) and all sorts of other bits of data (Wave, etc). I would not want a company with this kind of attitude to privacy in charge of all of that. (Which is why I don't use any of those things...)

Do they really own the email, or do they merely store it for users' convenience? I'm not clear on that one.

Anyway, expecting privacy in email is also a bad idea, considering that it goes through a large number of computers on unsecured lines. If you encrypt your emails, okay that would be helpful with privacy, but I don't use Google Mail so I don't know how it works with encryption.

But otherwise, if you're having a torrid affair and you talk about it with her in emails, it's quite possible that a private investigator (or the Mob) could snoop and nail you.